Archive for January 13th, 2008

WASHINGTON — The nation’s intelligence chief says waterboarding “would be torture” if used against him or if someone under interrogation actually was taking water into his lungs.

But Mike McConnell, in a magazine interview, declined for legal reasons to say whether the technique categorically should be considered torture.

“If it ever is determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it,” McConnell told The New Yorker, which published a 16,000-word article Sunday on the director of national intelligence.

The comments come as the House Intelligence Committee investigates the CIA’s destruction of videotaped interrogations of two al-Qaida suspects. The tapes were made in 2002 and destroyed three years later, over fears they would leak. They depicted the use of “enhanced” interrogation techniques against two of the three men known to have been waterboarded by the CIA.

As McConnell describes it, a prisoner is strapped down with a wash cloth over his face and water is dripped into his nose.

“If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can’t imagine how painful! Whether it’s torture by anybody else’s definition, for me it would be torture,” McConnell told the magazine.

Like this:

The faltering economy has caught the Iraq war as people’s top worry, a national poll suggests, with the rapid turnabout already showing up on the presidential campaign trail and in maneuvering between President Bush and Congress.

Twenty percent named the economy as the foremost problem in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Friday, virtually tying the 21 percent who cited the war. In October, the last time the survey posed the open-ended question about the country’s top issue, the war came out on top by a 2-1 majority.

About equal proportions of Republicans, Democrats and independents in the new poll said the economy was their major worry, suggesting the issue looms as a potent one in both parties’ presidential contests. It was also cited evenly across all levels of income, underscoring the variety of economic problems the country faces.

Amid increasing trade, job, housing, stock market and gasoline price woes, candidates from each party have started talking about how they would bolster the economy. The issue looms as the dominant one in the next presidential contest: Tuesday’s Republican primary in Michigan, which had a 7.4 percent unemployment rate in November that is the nation’s worst.

Even as signs of economic weakness in this country have grown in recent months, U.S. and Iraqi casualties in Iraq have been dropping since the summer. Though most in the U.S. remain against the war, growing numbers say they think President Bush’s troop increase last year has been working, and politicians say the issue is raised with decreasing frequency by constituents.

Like this:

An Iraqi traffic policeman inspects a car destroyed Sept. 16, 2007, by a Blackwater security detail in al-Nisoor Square in Baghdad, Iraq in this Sept. 20, 2007 file photo. Blackwater Worldwide repaired and repainted its trucks immediately after a deadly September shooting in Baghdad, making it difficult to determine whether enemy gunfire provoked the attack, according to people familiar with the government’s investigation of the incident. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed, File)

WASHINGTON — Blackwater Worldwide repaired and repainted its trucks immediately after a deadly September shooting in Baghdad, making it difficult to determine whether enemy gunfire provoked the attack, according to people familiar with the government’s investigation of the incident.

Damage to the vehicles in the convoy has been held up by Blackwater as proof that its security guards were defending themselves against an insurgent ambush when they fired into a busy intersection, leaving 17 Iraqi civilians dead.

U.S. military investigators initially found “no enemy activity involved” and the Iraqi government concluded the shootings were unprovoked.

The repairs essentially destroyed evidence that Justice Department investigators hoped to examine in a criminal case that has drawn worldwide attention. The Sept. 16 shooting has strained U.S. relations with the Iraqi government, which wants Blackwater expelled from the country. It also has become a flash point in the debate over whether contractors are immune from legal consequences for their actions in a war zone.

Blackwater’s four armored vehicles were repaired or repainted within days of the shooting, and before FBI teams went to Baghdad to collect evidence, people close to the case said. The work included repairs to a damaged radiator that Blackwater says is central to its defense.

Whether or not Bush manages to plunge the world into a new dark age may depend upon which version of the recent US/Iran confrontation is believed. So far, Bush’s utter lack of credibility may be working to our advantage. One dares not think of the consequences to world peace if Bush had embarked upon this tour of the middle east with a shred of credibility, a modicum of political capital among every Middle Eastern capital but Jerusalem.Israeli radio reports that Bush promised Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States will join Israel to nuke Iran. CNS reports the Bush administration had seriously considered the nuke option but put it on a back burner. Lydia Georgi, writing in Pakistan’s Daily Times, thinks Bush is unlikely to win support outside Israel for any US military action against Iran.

Like this:

We know now that the CIA kept from the 9/11 Commission tapes of al Qaeda suspects in violation of law. But why isn’t mainstream media (MSM) reporting about other tapes U.S. Intelligence kept from the 9/11 Commission?

In today’s 2-minute news sound bites it’s easy to deceive. Anthrax is released in letters and you are to believe that it came from Iraq. Next thing you know, we have a war in Iraq to eliminate their none existent stockpiles of anthrax. An “al Qaeda” suicide tape is released and you are to believe it came from al Qaeda.

Since the most important 9/11 hijackers were ringleader Mohammed Atta and Ziad Zarrah, let’s take a close look at the release of their “last will” tape and how it was reported. Clearly, the CIA kept other important 9/11 tapes from the 9/11 Commission and MSM helped with the cover-up. (more…)

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